30 Apr 2015

Repo Man – Minesweeping(Second vinyl only album by this great Bristol band on Lava Thief records...mixing the repetition of The Fall, the noise of Jesus Lizard and the skronk of Blurt)Repo Man

Gnod - Gestalt(50min track performed for live installation and documentary on Altered States)GnodFlowers Must Die – RVR / Berg / Third(Two amazing tapes called RVR and Berg and a great 'Third' album by this Swedish fuzz psych band)Flowers Must DieBitchin Bajas – Transporteur(Great new album of kraut repetition and spaced out synthscapes on the ever reliable Hand in Dark records)Bitchin BajasWhite Manna – Pan(Nice Loop/Hawkwind/Heads/Icarus Line sounding psych album on the great Cardinal Fuzz!!)White MannaThe Myrrors – Arena Negra(Stella International Harvester'esque psych)The Myrrors

The Quietus's John Doran reviews Gnod's Infinity Machines for Vice's Noisey site:Gnod – Infinity MachinesAfter heavy Chaudelande and some EPs the world's best psychedelic reconnaissance unit is back with a new studio album and it is of course in three parts . The first third is floating in a haze of Throbbing Gristle - like improvised electronica , spoken word , Post - Acid - Ambience and crazy guitar solos there. The jewel in this crown is undoubtedly the colossal " White Priviledged Wank " , which also functions as a prism and is meant to be held in front of the third eye , while staring directly at the sun . A rattling , exaggerated LSD dictator of a track that just collapses eventually under the weight of its own magnificence.See the review here: Noisey---

27 Apr 2015

After recently witnessing Gnod's amazing new set on their album launch and seeing Anthroprophh and Shit & Shine blow minds at Desert Fest last Saturday, this is looking to be a very special night indeed!!Info and tickets here: Cacophonous Sarcophagus

26 Apr 2015

Here is footage of Hills playing at FOLK in Gothenburg on Saturday where they supported the legendary Träd, Gräs & Stenar.We will have some exciting news about the new Hills album very shortly. In the meantime sit back and enjoy this!!---

24 Apr 2015

Mamuthones - Don't Be Choosy (Promo Video) from Rocket Recordings on Vimeo.Excited to announce that Mamuthones will be joining Hey Colossus at this years Liverpool Psych Fest.Rocket helped curate last years festival so it is great to be involved again this year!!The line up is looking ace, other notable bands playing include: Big Naturals, Evil Blizzard, Jane Weaver, Destruction Unit, Fumaca Preta, Vision Fortune, Lumerians, The Heads, Giant Swan, Sex Swing and many more…Tickets and more info are available here: Liverpool Psych Fest---

Shit and Shine – 54 Synth​-​Brass, 38 Metal Guitar, 65 CathedralThe ever-mutating musical Charybdis also known as Shit and Shine (or, as they call themselves in their newest incarnation: $hit and $hine) has gone a few stylistic changes over the years, de-amplifying their sound (chances are, you’ll never heard another “Ladybird” again) since their monstrous beginnings, but never getting away from the Weird factor. Because their newest album, the mindbogglingly named 54 Synth​-​Brass, 38 Metal Guitar, 65 Cathedral, released on Rocket Recordings is just as a solid slab of mutant loopadelica as you might expect. Summoning some dead German hippies back from the dead, “Re-Animator” style and combining it with some throbbing electronics infused with tape music legacy for a heavier freak-out factor, it’s a noisy, intensely psychedelic journey through the twisted, insane realm of Shit and Shine. Highly recommended!Visit the site here: Weed Temple---

21 Apr 2015

Jon from Hey Colossus has written this interesting piece for Q Magazine:-With Hey Colossus releasing their eighth album, In Black & Gold, earlier this year, guitarist Jon Richards presents an personal essay examining the spectrum of artists – and faces – across the British music scene.I recently had the great pleasure of being able to witness the Songhoy Blues concert at East London’s Oslo venue. I was part of a crowd enjoying new music, played by a conventionally set up band (Drums, Bass, Guitar and Vocals) and I was struck by how refreshing it was to see excellent performers completely engage an audience, despite a language barrier and some cultural differences.The band come from Mali, Africa and I can only imagine how surreal it must have been for them to travel so far from home and play their music to a sold out venue of rapturous fans. They seemed like such a cohesive unit. A very strong sound and appearance. With so much expectation and love coming from the crowd. Part of Songhoy Blues’ appeal, for me, is their otherness. Young black men playing live instruments, singing and dancing. Holding down a zeitgeist show in packed club, the way The Strokes or The White Stripes did at the turn of the century. An antithesis to the Brit school studied pop, or the officer-class acoustic troubadours, or the grime MCs, or the pseudodelic rockers and all that we take for granted as being the best in popular music trends in 2015.I found myself trying to remember the last time I had seen a young black guitar group and – more to the point – had I ever seen it from UK band? Sure, there are always non-white faces to be seen in bands on stages all over the world, but an all black UK rock band? After much head scratching, I found myself reaching all the way back to the 1980s for examples such as Musical Youth, Aswad, SoulII Soul and Roachford. Really.How can it be that we are celebrating an exoticness in rock music so well by championing fantastic acts like Songhoy Blues, Tinariwen and Tal National, to name but a few, whilst the current pop landscape seems to be almost bereft of non-Caucasian rock bands and musicians here in the UK?…Read the rest of this piece here: Q Magazine---

Here's the great Cairo Liberation Front remix of Lay Llamas track 'Something Wrong'.You can hear (and then buy on yellow vinyl) the original track from Lay Llamas debut album 'Ostro' from here: Rocket Bandcamp---

That is right, the masters at Baba Yaga's Hut have just announced two amazing shows:Gnod / Hey ColossusCorsica Studios24 July 2015TicketsShit & ShineCorsica Studios30 July 2015TicketsCheck out the full listings for Baba Yaga shows here: Baba Yaga's Hut
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Drowned in Sound have written a great 9/10 review of Gnod's new album Infinity Machines:INTERNATIONAL HEALTH ADVISORY WARNINGFrom the Drowned in Sound Health Promotion Division (DiSHPD)A new strain of the drone-borne supervirus Gnod may infect roughly 102 people in London, according to a recent study published in the Lancet. Due to its abnormally long latent period, the new strain has been dubbed Infinity Machines.The study, conducted by a team of epidemiologists from the University of Georgia, warned consumers to listen for 'uncontrollable saxophone squalls, industrial-grade throbs, a repetitive Germanic pulse, and tangential voice clips, all of which may last from six minutes to half an hour'.Initial symptoms appear 18 minutes after infection, and may include dizzy spells, drowsiness, blurry vision, short term memory loss, and loss of focus. More severe side affects, such as mild to moderate anxiety, aural and visual hallucinations, brief unconsciousness, and general hopelessness, may develop after an hour…Read the rest of the review here: Drowned in Sound---

We are excited by the release of Gnod's long awaited new album Infinity Machines that is out today.The press release reads:Slaves to no-one but their own psychic co-ordinates, GNOD continue their fearless voyages down pathways unknown. Operating from their base camp and spiritual home, the legendary Islington Mill - a venue, art-space and liminal zone in Salford: A space that has allowed the band the freedom to stubbornly pursue their own free-flowing aesthetic in a judgement free environment. ‘Infinity Machines’, their fifth release for Rocket Recordings, and the latest for this prolific outfit in a vibrant and diverse history, is no less than a pinnacle of achievement for a band who exist beyond all or any reductive genre pigeonholes, not to mention beyond the constraints of the everyday. A triple-album, it explores a unique vision informed by experimental élan and metaphysical intensity. "At the time of recording the album in the venue of the mill, there was a crazy energy kicking around the place. The concept of the album is not solely focused on the Mill , its wider in scope as a look at ourselves as people and people as "Infinity Machines". Your brain is the machine of infinite possibilities"‘Infinity Machines’ traverses between and beyond a variety of different headspaces from the bleak to the beatific – yet whilst touching on nocturnal jazz, soothing yet unsettling ambience, menacing aggro-industrial battery and opiated bliss-out alike, it’s shot through with an undercurrent of fiery countercultural zeal and small-hours revelation, as if the hive-mind of their home collective had manifested itself on six sides of wax.Now more than ever, In Gnod We Trust.Tracklist:1. Control Systems2. Collateral Damage3. Desire4. Importance Of Downtime5. White Privileged Wank6. Spinal Fluid7. Breaking The Hex8. Infinity MachinesThe album is released in all good shops on 3LP / 2CD / DL on 20th April 2015. LP pressing is ltd to 1000 copies for the world.---

Press release:There was a time in Italy when movies did not suck. Or at least, when they sucked, they did it in a graciously peculiar way. Alongside the world-famous auteurs (the Fellinis, the Viscontis, the Bertoluccis), there was a plethora of lesser known, critically unappreciated directors, often mockingly called cinematografari, frantically tackling (and twisting) every kind of movie genre: western, comedy, thriller. For some reason, they excelled especially in their wild, sick take on horror and crime dramas – and music played a big role in these successes.Classically trained composers like Ennio Morricone and Stelvio Cipriani rubbed shoulders with former pop stars-turned-soundtrackers like Nico Fidenco and Pino Donaggio and together happily immersed themselves in the muddy waters of this cinematic swamp, creating their own distorted versions of the funk, psychedelia and beat rock canons. The aberrant results were then applied like thick make-up to equally mind-boggling, malevolent, highly stylized movies from directors like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci or schlock uebermeister Joe D’Amato.For a brief period it worked at the box office too. “Nostra Signora delle Tenebre” is a tribute to that extraordinary, by-gone era now apparently forgotten in Italy too. It is a tribute to the gloriously adventurous soundtracks of maybe somehow less glorious horror and giallo flicks – movies that anyway retained a decidedly Italian flavour, a bizarre mix of nasty violence, lurid sexuality and feverish Catholic mysticism, all filtered through a manic obsession with death, blood and the sins of the flesh.At the same time, this album is a way to celebrate a small but thriving national scene, generally labeled under the admittedly lazy banner of “Italian occult psychedelia” and championed by the likes of Simon Reynolds and Julian Cope while at the same time getting growing interest from music magazines, with several features on The Wire, Vice, Fact Magazine, Tiny Mixtapes, Foxy Digitalis etc.“Nostra Signora delle Tenebre” gathers together almost all the best bands in the scene: groups like Michael Gira’s favourites Father Murphy, Lay Llamas and Mamuthones (now both on Rocket Recordings), Heroin In Tahiti, Cannibal Movie and Jennifer Gentle, probably the best known Italian indie band abroad and whose “A New Astronomy” album is considered a forefather of the genre.We asked these bands to revive some of our favourite horror and giallo soundtracks from the 60’s and the 70’s. They did it in their own way, and it sounds good.

14 Apr 2015

It has just been announced that Goat will be returning to Glastonbury this year!!The band graced the Glastonbury stages twice in 2013 and they are returning to wow the crowds once again!!More information can be found here: Glastonbury and here Facebook---

Goat – Circomedia, Bristol – live review4th April 2015 As part of the Red Bull Music Academy UK Tour Goat played Bristol’s Circomedia last weekend. Here Philip Allen reports back from a show where audience participation was mandatory. Red Bull Music Academy invited the curious and the brave to Circomedia’s beautiful converted church on Portland Square in St Paul’s in order to explore the frontiers of music and identity in a sonic soiree with the Swedish alt-folk innovators, Goat.Famed for the immersive live extravaganzas and free form approach to music-making, Goat’s focus for this very special night was to discover the full meaning of collective experience: ridding oneself of the ego and diving headfirst into the combined energy of ‘the crowd’. In order to do this they feel it necessary to level the playing field. Saying goodbye to anything associated with social hierarchy, image, everything. Phones, cameras, money, all were jettisoned before entering the main room where the dance took place. Where the rhythmic, pulsating melodies filling the floor would allow all to lose their inhibitions and surrender to the music.It felt very surreal with everyone in the main space wearing Kaftans and various masks given out upon entering, flooding the visual cortex in a truly psychedelic way. As the opening notes of ‘Talk To God’ rang out throughout the room began a truly dazzling performance. The spell they cast seems to have bound the people present into the sort of collective experience I have never witnessed before.In the womb of this converted church, tonight’s gig took on a spiritual quality beyond expectation. The lucky few hundred that managed to get tickets for the show were reveling in the immersive nature of this performance. Those who have seen Goat play live have come to understand the special esoteric nature their music has. Tracks such as ‘Gathering Of Ancient Tribes’ & ‘Hide From The Sun’ sounds especially ‘out there’ taking us all on a journey of self discovery, connecting modern techniques with ancient beliefs.Check out some GREAT photos from the show here: Louder than War(by the way, spot the shifty character in the black jacket on the right of this picture above)---

That is right, Lay Llamas are to release their live set from the Roundhouse when they supported Goat on CD. The album is released on the great 4 Zero records.The album contains the full performance, plus a very special extra track!!Visit the labels website for more info: 4 Zero---

13 Apr 2015

Gnod – Infinity MachinesFormed in 2006, GNOD have emerged as an unencumbered, constantly revolving cast purveying longform delirium that veers into transcendent heights as much as it does utter meltdowns. With ‘Infinity Machines’ their trademark evasion of consistent structural foundations continues but whereas previous ventures like 2013’s ‘Chaudelande’ compilation showed a band versed in the hurtling, fiery purr of Neu!-like road journeys, this latest excursion treads heavily and drifts headily, into different kinds of outer territory. From the off the impact of this divergent lease of sound is startling. ‘Control Systems’ begins with huge jarring echoes seemingly wrenched out of a vacuum and proceeds with gargantuan tremors, as the signals of space detritus seem to glance off each other and communicate in garbled phrases. Voices mill around until an impasse is reached. Glass shatters and a slightly timid Northern Irish accent begins to ruminate intimately and frankly on the nature of modern privacy, whilst the plaintive twinkle of sporadically chiming Rhodes piano adds a disarmingly moving undertow to it all. A bed of frazzled drone forms the basis as expressive lilts and powerful sputters of sax begin to resound as if emanating from some mountainous pulpit, half resembling the blistering catharsis of free jazz and half redolent of the sweeping mysticism of spiritual jazz. From there a heavy-set carriage of percussion leadenly strikes up and it moves into a more sinister downturn of agonized, tense wails.Read the rest of the review here: Ransom Note---

Gnod – Infinity MachineGnod have produced a monolithic slab of unquantifiable proportions, with every track facilitating its own mini trip its an incredible collection of tracks. One of the finest things I’ve heard all year so far!The almighty purveyors of psychedelic synthesised noise Gnod are back with a monolithic album in the form of Infinity Machines, clocking in at over 2 hours (if you include the bonus live set) this is an incredible feat in itself. As opener Control Systems bleeps and squelches into life, it transforms itself into a saxophone driven piece from outer space with its twinkly synth lines.The sparse quotes providing a small let up from the otherwise spaced out free jazz of the track, an incredible way to open this epic album. Collateral Damage continues using the saxophone theme but the interspersions are more frequent to begin with, the discussion of taking someone else’s creative output as your own rumbling on in the effected background of the track...Read the rest of the review here: Louder than War---

The UK’s finest DIY labels, picked by Gnod’s Paddy ShineTricky thing to do, write about music – whether it’s bands, labels, influences, there’s just so much good stuff it hurts my brain to dwell on it.The DIY scene seems to be in very good health. My band, Gnod, and our labels, Tesla Tapes and OnoTesla, would not exist if it wasn’t. I think the scene has been flourishing since the 80s because, as we all know, “for every action there must be an equal but opposite reaction” – and one thing’s for sure, there is an awful lot of bullshit out there for us to react against. From being a 90s teenager, I guess DIY first came to me in the form of mixtape culture, which is fully ingrained into my psyche – I still have some muddy as hell Crass/Conflict/Subhumans mixtapes from when I was 14, hastily recorded from my mate’s uncle’s record collection. That’s 20 years I’ve had those tapes for now, and they sound like shit but I can still make out and remember all the lyrics to the tunes: “Big A, little A, bouncing B / The system might have got you but it won’t get me”, etc.When I was asked to write about my favourite labels from the UK I was slightly worried about laying out my myopic take on something as vast a “DIY scene”. I initially had a list as long as my arm, but decided to whittle it down to labels that I like, that are on the fringes…Read the rest of this piece here: FACT magazine---

These posters will be available as a ltd edition screen print, the design will also be printed on a ltd run of tour tshirts. Both these will only available at the following shows:6 May - Roma @ Orion Club 7 May - Milano @ Magnolia Club (w/ Mamuthones)8 May - Ravenna @ Bronson Club (w/ Mamuthones)9 May - Brescia @ Latteria Molloy (w/ Mamuthones)---

10 Apr 2015

Gnod - Infinity MachinesYou never quite know what to expect with Gnod...or is that gnever gnow? One of the most mysterious and innovative bands of the last few years, they’ve covered the gamut of the music spectrum from dark techno, twisted psych and pretty much everything in between. Now, with their new triple album, Infinity Machines they once again reinvent the wheel and take everything you have ever known and spin it into something completely different.At first list it’s all a bit disconcerting. Gone are the extreme bouts of noise and in its place is a much more measured, ambient sound. Seemingly taking its cue from a jazz viewpoint, the shades of Miles Davis (in particular Bitches Brew) and Sun Ra poke through the ethereal, industrial music, opening up new realms of possibilities within the songs. In fact scratch that, these aren’t songs in any sense we know, these are more collages of sound cobbled together to create a quite disturbing whole.As a triple album the whole thing can seem quite disconcerting and with a number of tracks stretching out over the seventeen minute mark you really do need to set some time aside for it. Once you do you will find yourself adrift on a journey unlike any other and may even question reality itself by the end of it. This is psychedelic jamming on an extreme scale although the word psychedelic here is not in any way meant to link itself in with a psych genre. This is genre-less stuff and belongs in a room by itself…Read the rest of the review here: Echoes and Dust---

This is a great and revealing read:From Here To InfinityGnod InterviewedKilling off psych rock, Gnod have returned with their boldest statement to date. The Skinny taps into the infinity machineFEATURE BY SIMON JAY CATLING.PUBLISHED 09 APRIL 2015It would’ve been hard to guess amidst 1000 or so revellers trading off slithers of their cerebrum at the altar of Gnod last September at Liverpool Psych Fest, but on the stage at least, a funeral was taking place. Joined by White Hills’ Dave W on guitar, the Salford collective tore through four cuts from their 2009 collaboration with the LA psych-rockers for what was to be the last time.“We agreed that this would be the last time we’d do it. It was a lot of fun, really cathartic,” says Paddy Shine, coming to after a late night in Merseyside as part of This Heat drummer Charles Hayward’s Anonymous Bash live band. “But it felt like the end of a chapter for us.”Along with Gnod co-founder Chris Haslam, we’re in Shine’s living space-cum-workshop for Gnod label Tesla Tapes, deep inside Salford venue and studio space Islington Mill. Records are stacked high behind us, analogue odds and ends scattered around the furniture, while a cat scuttles around the bare pipework; our conversation is punctuated by the hum of a fish tank and the outré jazz entanglements of Rocket Recordings labelmates Shit & Shine’s latest record. The Victorian-era Mill, with its Situationist-inspired aim to create an open-source environment for artists to practice away from conventional spaces, has recently held more influence over Gnod than anything else. “You just become part of the place,” Shine says. “We can invite whoever we want to come and stay, and 90% of the time these people will put some work on here or collaborate with an artist. It’s inspiring.”…Read the rest of this great interview here: The Skinny---

9 Apr 2015

With Roadburn starting today, The Quietus have listed their must see bands of the weekend, including this little write up about Anthroprophh:AnthroprophhWith The Heads acting as this years 'artists in residence' (and of course playing a set themselves… more on that later), it's perhaps little surprise to see Heads man Paul Allen's Anthroprophh also on the bill. Perhaps more exploratory that The Heads – and that's saying something – the trio exist as a sort of garage rock Monster Magnet on kosmisch overdrive channelling Sun Ra's Hawkwind-stra; and if that sounds like the sort of pretentious twaddle you'd hate, then catching this lot is absolutely essential. (And also, why are you at Roadburn in the first place?!)The band hit the stage tonightDon't miss it if you are going!!!!See the full write-up here: The Quietus---

8 Apr 2015

Ahead of Goat's Bristol show, Redbull Academy interviewed the band and asked them some questions about their lives in Sweden. The band talked about some rural traditions and RBA got famed artist Kent Able to illustrate these traditions into the picture that is above. RBA have then turned the image into a 'Where's Wally' type of game??? Can it get any weirder??Anyway, you can read more about it and play the game here: Red Bull Academy---

GoatCircomedia / Bristol4 AprilSurreality is the name of the game for Goat, a band that revel in the mysterious. Masked and enigmatic, the experimental rock outfit from Gothenburg in Sweden take on the magisterial venue of Circomedia as part of the Red Bull Music Academy tour, but for this gig the mystery is not confined to the band. Upon entering the reclaimed church in St Paul’s, punters are requested to ‘Surrender Yourself’ and are provided with blank tasselled masks and african-ish smocks.So far so bizarre, then, the resulting crowd resembling the characters from Eyes Wide Shut in a reasonably horrifying way – it is an uneasy, if innovative, foundation for an event considering The Fix’s paranoia regarding masks. Even to reach the external toilets one has to walk over dusky graves. When Goat emerge from the alter to begin proceedings with, quite naturally, ‘Talk to God’, the scene is quite spectacular, and goes far beyond your normal gig fare. The jangling guitar that is so present on record becomes more of a Deliverance-style banjo-esque riff for this opener...Read the rest of the review here: The FixPhoto by @SteveStills @AthenaAnastasiou---

GNODINFINITY MACHINES…Infinity Machines is littered with several unexpected new elements, from the rambling spoken word samples taken from residents and artists based in the group's Islington Mill, to the Rhodes piano and aforementioned saxaphone that takes centre stage at several key junctures in the album. The seventeen minute opener, 'Control Systems' begins with laughter from one Islington Miller, with another commenting, "I quite like people being around, I also like to know I can have a bit of space and shut the door". Later in the track, another resident goes on, "notions of public and private are very mixed up...daydreaming is a kind of private space."Thematically, this summarises much of the activity on Infinity Machines, which is ultimately a clash of the internal and external; the sound of many participating artists manifesting their clashing internal worlds in the Islington Mill, daydreaming together. The album comprises many layered and reassembled sessions at the mill, and the many seamlessly sewn together parts that make up ‘Control Systems' microcosmically comes to symbolise the album as a whole. Several minutes or abstract sound effects, and battling synth noises litter the foreground while wave after wave of bassy throbbing noise rhythmically pulsates underneath. Suddenly glass smashes and we jump cut to odd shapes getting plodded out on a contemplative and very pretty Silent Way Rhodes piano...Read the rest of the review here: Infinity Machines---

1 Apr 2015

As you know, Rocket are huge advocates for Supernormal Festival.We helped curate the first one and have had our bands/DJs involved ever since.And this year is no exception, among the line this year we have Anonymous Bash (The Charles Heyward/Gnod collaboration) plus Marlene from Gnod's project, Negra Branca.Teeth of the Sea's offshoot Hirvikolari are playing also. Other standouts include Blood Sport (who appeared on our 15th Anniversary comp), Guapo and Necro Dethmort, plus loads more still to be announced!!The festival happens on the weekend of 7 August, and tickets can be bought here: Supernormal---